GAUVIN: Narco-induced violence like a tsunami in Mexico and a ripple in Barnstable

Written by Paul Gauvin

April 02, 2010

During the last holiday season of peace and hope, a 33-year-old U.S. born teacher and school board member from El Monte, Calif., visited the parents of his physician wife in Mexico’s state of Durango.

They were dining out with friends – like you might at a Hyannis Main Street restaurant – when armed thugs invaded the place and abducted the teacher along with five other men. Their bodies were later found by a canal. All had been shot in the head, reported the Los Angeles Times. The story described the upstanding teacher as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That homicidal event coupled with the recent shooting deaths of U.S. Consul employees across the El Paso, Tex., border two weeks ago, have helped catapult apparent drug-related deaths in Durango to over 679 since 2007 and boosted the estimated national figure to 10,031 in three years, since 2007. That is double the 4,690 coalition casualties – 4,372 U.S. alone – during the 8-year Iraq War.

The non-fatal Hyannis shootings on Nautical Way, the recent stabbings, one at Pufferbellies two weeks ago and troubles in Captain’s Quarters area during the last year pale significantly on the violence chart. No wonder the people of Barnstable give the police here a high 87 percent approval rating, according to the citizens’ survey. Most citizens continue to report they feel protected. Comparatively speaking, they are as safe as a dollar bill in a tightwad’s pocket.

The Los Angeles Times has been doing a bang-up job reporting the cross-border drug war, maintaining running totals of drug related homicides – which included 12 journalists and media people last year – identification of narco kingpins and other ugly news born of a dreadful industry that survives on U.S. money, U.S. guns and U.S. narco-consumers and, some believe, U.S. indifference.

The news accounts were read by friends of ours from Los Angles who digested the above-mentioned abduction quickly and somehow thought Cancun was the site of the crime. It contributed to their anxiety because Cancun is where our friends landed for a visit and where college kids head for spring break. Be careful.

We told them the drug war is not evident to us in our neck of the woods about 70 miles southeast of Cancun, which also is far from the border with the U.S. and other drug-troubled states. Yet, riding back to the condo from the beach on our bikes, we were surprised to see three large army personnel carriers parked alongside the marina where a platoon of armed men in intimidating camo fatigues and Uzi-type weapons hanging on their chests scoured the boats, crevices in walls and any niche where something like a brick of drugs or weapon could be cached as many tourists walked on by.

This led me to forage in the L.A. Times’ archive of drug information where I found that there indeed had been 18 drug-related homicides since 2007 in the state of Yucatan and 62 in Quintana Roo, where we’ve been nesting for the winter.

As we get to converse with more continental snowbirds here, we find an undercurrent of thinly-veiled concern wrapped in bravado. They smile like a man hearing a joke on his way to the gas chamber as they ask, “Do you feel safe here? We do,” – an attempt to reinforce the notion of being truly secure in a brittle environment.

Crime has certainly increased in Mexico, but, whether it has in Barnstable, people evidently feel like it has, according to the town-commissioned citizen’s survey by the Center For Policy Analysis at UMass Dartmouth. The poll reports that 60.2 percent think there is more crime over last year’s 44.8 percent.

There is little doubt the endless profits of drug trafficking contribute mightily to the incidence of criminal activity here and in Mexico as governments entangle themselves in what seems to be a socially crippling battle, one that perpetuates the violence. What to do?

Five or six years ago I was sitting on a Hyannis beach with a retired economist for the Central Intelligence Agency whose job it had been to trail the laundering of Latin American drug money. It was his observation at the time that the only way to end the drug violence was to legalize the industry, pre-empt the criminal sales of narcotics. It seemed a ludicrous idea from the U.S. perspective.

Now the same suggestion has risen from the ranks of Mexican intelligentsia by way of a Spanish-language book, (Narco: The Failed War) authored by two former Mexican government officials. They say U.S. consumption of narcotics is the motor for the drug foothold in Mexico and that debate should shift northward and toward decriminalization or legalization of drugs in the United States.

If that’s an idea whose time has come, few people north of the border seem ready to embrace it, let alone introduce it for debate, perhaps for fear of being ridiculed.

Meanwhile, Barnstable residents will continue to be told the few incidents of gang violence and drive-bys are drug inspired. Like death and taxes, these unwanted events have become another certainty we can rely on for some time to come.